The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Public Cloud

In recent years, cloud computing has grown in popularity, attracting organizations of all kinds to adopt it. But, with the digital 21st century’s paradigm change, the exponential rise in data consumption has made it impossible for people and businesses to keep their important information, applications, and resources on their in-house servers.

Setting up and maintaining your infrastructure can be a herculean task considering the number of security challenges an on-premise server might put forward. When maintaining infrastructure on your own, scalability is a challenge. When a huge segment of your workforce is involved, the entire ecosystem will not only burn a hole in your pocket but will also result in severe losses if the acquired technology becomes obsolete. So, how would you save your business from incurring such high expenses?

The public cloud is the solution to all your questions. By outsourcing your on-premises infrastructure, you can avoid the high cost of procuring, administering, and maintaining it. It allows you to focus only on your core business. Businesses have profited from it since it allows staff to work from anywhere during challenging periods like pandemics.

As per Gartner, end-user spending on public cloud services has grown by 21.7% and is set to reach $482 billion by 2022.

Public cloud services end-user spending worldwide from 2017 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Source: Gartner

Let’s take a brief look at what a public cloud is before we get into the benefits of using it and how it can help you take your business to the next level.

Introduction to Public Cloud

The public cloud is the most popular model of cloud computing services. In these services, a third-party cloud provider administers different on-demand computing resources for businesses and communication-based organizations of all sizes.

Public cloud works to eliminate the need for users to host resources and services in their own data center. This enables them to save on maintenance and purchase costs of their own data centers and other IT accessories while retaining total data privacy.

Here are the top five features of the public cloud:

1. Work from anywhere:

It uses the shared public cloud platform via an active internet connection. It also allows multiple users to share the same resources anywhere and anytime.

2. Reliability:

It has robust architecture, offering an uptime of 99.99%. It also keeps your confidential data safe from sudden data loss.

3. No resource maintenance:

As the public cloud provider takes care of the maintenance of your servers, you are free from that task. Hence, it also helps in reducing the cost of appointing a separate workforce for maintaining the server and hardware.

4. Pay-per-use model:

Most cloud service providers charge on a pay-as-you-go basis. Our public cloud is also working on the pay-per-use model. Such a model allows you to save a significant amount of money on maintenance while lowering the TCO (total cost of ownership).

5. On-demand, self-service provisioning:

Public cloud allows users with a self-service portal to scale up or down the resources at their convenience.

Benefits and Use Cases of Public Cloud

No one can predict a disaster, but you need to be ready for one. Disaster recovery can be quite challenging. However, comes easy with the public cloud as its deployment model allows the cloud service provider to own and operate various computing shareable resources across several users simultaneously via the internet.

Gartner forecasts that by 2025, 51% of IT spending will shift from traditional solutions to the public cloud, compared to 41% in 2022.

Let’s take a look at the six primary benefits of the public cloud.

1. Lesser Cost:

The public cloud costs lesser than a private or hybrid cloud as it entails sharing the same resources with a larger base of users.

2. Time Saver:

With cloud service providers managing and maintaining data centers becomes less time-consuming. Users save a lot of time in creating connectivity, releasing new products, providing product updates, configuring, and assembling the servers worrying about scaling their infrastructure with business.

3. Simple and quick set-up:

The public cloud is simple to get started with, and its deployment and configuration are lightning quick.

4. Business Agility:

It allows businesses to effortlessly adjust their computing resources to meet their specific needs while still managing everything remotely.

5. Scalability and dependability:

It offers 24*7 services while allowing organizations to meet the changing demands of data storage capacity, processing power, and networking, easier scalability, with little to zero downtime.

6. Security and Auto-Backups:

It allows small and medium-scale businesses with advanced cloud services to apply stringent security measures and back up data to prevent any data loss in case of any mishaps or technical glitches.

As per Synergy, there will be continued growth in worldwide adoption and cloud revenues as spending on IaaS reached $29 billion in Q1 2020, witnessing a growth of 37% from 2019. Public cloud providers commit to delivering their infrastructure, storage, networking, and other application services over the internet or through dedicated connections, and use a fundamental pay-per-use approach along with offering a service platform to support the resource demands.

Let’s look at some of the most common use cases of public cloud:

1. Hosting applications and services

Businesses can host a variety of applications, games, software, and websites on the public cloud for users to access it from anywhere rather than relying on physical distribution. This is essential to consider for any company that offers software and services and wants its compute capacity to grow along with the need of the application, ensuring the best quality service for all end users.

2. Cloud storage

Data storage remains the primary use case of the public cloud for businesses of all sizes who want to outsource their server maintenance operations to reduce maintenance costs. Cloud service providers offer flat rates as well as a pay-as-you-use model to allow users to store data in the most cost-efficient manner.

3. Worldwide accessibility

Most public cloud providers offer a relatively shorter time-to-market for businesses that lack resources and an existing IT environment at the start by making their services available worldwide immediately. This concentration on the core business and the demand-oriented provision of the required IT services will thereby increase their chance of business success.

4. E-Commerce applications

It empowers e-commerce businesses by ensuring that the website response time, as well as users’ shopping experience, is not affected during the peak shopping season, helping indirectly with business growth. Also, public cloud services play a huge role in preventing an immense loss of revenue in times of server failure by offering disaster backup and recovery by activating an emergency infrastructure in times of need.

5. Banking and financial sector

Businesses that demand the utmost security and scalability, like the finance sector, can benefit from the public cloud as it offers secure and reliable services.

Why choose Public Cloud for your Business?

Here are the five reasons for you to decide to go with the public cloud without further ado:

1. Market share:

With the public cloud dominating the existing market, there are two other options available for organizations to choose from private cloud and hybrid cloud. While the private cloud network offers exclusive, cost-effective cloud services for each organization but with a lower chance of scalability, the hybrid cloud, an amalgamation of public and private clouds, offers both public and private cloud services but with added complexity.

Pinterest, Evernote, and Coca-Cola are some of the top names in the world that are using the public cloud.

2. Performance and Availability:

One prime advantage of public cloud services over other cloud services is that it allows users to access and pay only as per usage for their on-demand resources, so they’d rather invest those funds in their core business instead. This takes away their worry about managing the infrastructure, thereby boosting their productivity.

3. Simplified Disaster Recovery:

Public cloud offers automated, scalable disaster recovery, enabling business continuity and offering uninterrupted services by instantly backing up users in case of any sudden, unexpected failure.

4. Safe and Secure:

Security is paramount while considering any cloud service, and it is natural for users to choose a cloud service provider that is more reliable. A public cloud environment is built to be highly secure to guard any type of user data by firewalls, protected with SSL and other app security methods, keeping it away from any intrusion attacks powered with 24×7 security monitoring and third-party installed certifications.

5. Self-Service:

Public cloud service providers provide self-service support, which includes help materials, how-to videos, tutorials, a plethora of tips and tricks, and best practices materials that users can access at any time and from any location, allowing them to seamlessly scale up or down as needed.

Public Cloud Architecture

A cloud service provider offers a fully virtualized public cloud environment in logically isolated locations through multi-tenant architecture. This unique architecture enables users to run workloads on shared infrastructure and use the same computing resources by isolating each tenant’s data in the public cloud.

Public cloud architecture can be categorized by the three hosted services offered: SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. Let us now look into the details:

Public Cloud Service Models

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a service (SaaS) is a way of delivering applications as a service over the internet. Its structure allows the cloud service provider to distribute the software hosted on the public cloud, allowing users to share the same software without installing it on their machines. It is a centrally managed service, taken care of by the public cloud provider, which eliminates the need for installation or configuration. The most common examples of SaaS are Netflix and Office 365.

Consider SaaS if you are working on short-term projects that have the demand for collaboration, if you are a startup – in a hurry to launch e-commerce but do not have the resources or time to manage the hardware issues, or if your applications require mobile and also web accessibility.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is a cloud computing approach in which a public cloud service provider provides its users with hardware and software tools through the internet. In this, the public cloud provider creates and supports a streamlined environment comprising computing and storage resources provided to the users.

PaaS is used for software development, eliminating the need for developers to start from scratch and maintain the software to develop applications, offering more flexibility. The most common examples of PaaS are Windows Azure and Cloud Foundry.

Consider PaaS if a developer wants to develop a customized application or if you prefer a reduced cost for the development process.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model is functional when an organization wants to outsource all its data centers to a cloud service provider. In this model, the service provider hosts storage servers, networking hardware, and other essentials in conjunction with maintaining the entire environment virtualization, allowing organizations to pay only for those resources that they are using. The most common examples of IaaS are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Consider using PaaS when you need to run and manage your website or application or if you are looking to create virtual data centers.

Here’s a comparison of the traditional on-premise model with IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS cloud service models.

Understanding IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS cloud service models

Source: Medium

How Public Cloud combats the Cloud Security Challenges?

With 94% of organizations worldwide using cloud services today (Source: Flexera), everyone must evaluate their cloud security to protect their data. Multiple organizations and several users access a cloud network simultaneously, causing concern in the end user’s mind regarding the overall security.

Public cloud service providers provide exceptional security options and work relentlessly to prevent data breaches to maintain customer trust. They even employ skilled and trained personnel to automate all the security functions as well as create AI algorithms for the identification of any abnormality or malicious behavior in the system processes and safeguard user data with the help of strict policies.

Organizations seeking solutions to public cloud security should consider the following methods:

• Risk assessment: Review risk assessments to avoid potential threats from hackers and identify risk factors introduced by cloud environments and providers.
• Encryption: Cloud data encryption can be used to prevent unauthorized access to data by making original information unreadable except for authorized users.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Implement a cloud DLP solution so that users can’t send critical information/data outside the corporate network.
• Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Solutions: Implement a solution that can help you back up your data to eliminate the risk of cyber threats, natural disasters, and malicious human intent.

How Does Ace Cloud Hosting Help With Public Cloud Services

Ace Cloud Hosting is a reliable name among the public cloud providers. It offers customizable Public Cloud solutions based on open-source and commercial technologies such as OpenStack, CEPH, KVM, and more. We give our customers the advantage of focusing on their core business while outsourcing all their hardware, configurations for different servers, storage disks (SSD, hard disk), processor maintenance (CPU), and technical requirements to us.

Our public cloud network services provide clients with increased security and performance at a lower cost. The network traffic generated by each end-user goes through channelizing in each data center. We use Tier 3+/4 data centers that keep the data and applications completely safe. It ascertains near-zero latency while also keeping malicious traffic at bay.

If you’re looking for a feasible and cost-effective public cloud solution, ACE is the way to go. It easily adapts to a variety of user-friendly solutions and programs. You’ll also save a lot of money on licensing fees while maintaining total transparency and security. You can also store data or create backups directly on the cloud servers.

Our cloud IT environment has a self-service client portal that enables you to customize system notifications so that you get notified when anything needs attention. Besides all this, our support team provides round-the-clock assistance.

Get in touch with us to get personalized public cloud solutions.

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